Dark Reading is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them.Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Database Security
Authentication
Mobile
Privacy
Compliance
Careers and People
Identity & Access Management
Security Monitoring
Advanced Threats
Insider Threats
Vulnerability Management
Comments
Making the Case for a Cybersecurity Moon Shot
Newest First  |  Oldest First  |  Threaded View
drmikelloyd
50%
50%
drmikelloyd,
 User Rank: Author
2/26/2019 | 7:36:41 PM
Re: A network that understands hardness
Sure - how about:

Abandon the "permitted by default" network model.  Endpoints must prove to networks that they are ready to be exposed to anything beyond their immediate neighborhood.  Moderate access requires only basic proof of hygeine, while a new Internet-facing web server (or container) must demonstrate being hardened and ready before the flood gates are opened.
adamshostack
50%
50%
adamshostack,
 User Rank: Apprentice
2/26/2019 | 6:58:42 PM
Re: A network that understands hardness
I think I see where you're going -- can you rewrite it as a moonshot goal?
drmikelloyd
50%
50%
drmikelloyd,
 User Rank: Author
2/25/2019 | 8:43:26 PM
Re: A network that understands hardness
Right - there is a big distinction between general purpose endpoints and special purpose "things".  Laptops get patched regularly, and have decent internal firewalls.  That said, the market for network firewalls has not gone away - it's interesting to look at reasons why. 

Laptops are great and all, but they aren't where most of the value resides.  Data centers are fragile in one way - huge uptime pressure, and an unwillingness to patch.  IoT devices are fragile in a completely different way - they lack a decent patching infrastructure, and are generally designed to a pricepoint, not about flexible response to a changing security landscape.

My response to your moonshot question comes from a point of view that "between" still matters.  Security tech is either placed on endpoints, or between them.  The endpoint security products face challenges (too many agents, not to mention endpoints that aren't built to accomodate agents - does your fridge?).  That's why there is still a large challenge space around "between" controls.  It's the old debate - shiould the network just be dumb pipes, or should it provide intelligent services and controls?

I'm suggesting a moonshot for a network that can enforce intelligent controls *between* endpoints as the way forward.  This is a moonshot because today, endpoints do not have to play along, or follow any hygeine standards, or register what kind of object they are.  We've stacked up some ways to lock down laptops, and messed around with MDM, but what about all the things that are neither?
adamshostack
50%
50%
adamshostack,
 User Rank: Apprentice
2/25/2019 | 6:09:50 PM
Re: A network that understands hardness
Hi thanks Mike!

 

Is this still a problem? I was under the impression that most mainstream systems were fairly firewalled these days, but perhaps I'm thinking more of desktops and less of IoT?

 

Adam
drmikelloyd
50%
50%
drmikelloyd,
 User Rank: Author
2/20/2019 | 2:39:43 PM
A network that understands hardness
Nice question, Adam.  How about a project to ensure a machine directly exposed to the Internet does not immediately succumb to all the known "background radiation" out there? 

There are a range of possible implementations (proactive vs reactive hardening).  But similar to your goal of "email payloads should never be detonated", I'm thinking "maintain a living battery of tests that must pass as basic hygeine before a machine can be exposed widely".  It's not NAC - it's more like the inverse.  NAC says you can't even access a local network unless you're "clean" to a specified level.  This project flips that, to say the level of hardening required depends on breadth of exposure to others.

The moonshot aspect of this is to teach the network (where access policy is enforced) about the quality or hardness of each endpoint.  In an IoT future, this may be essential - consumer IoT is too weak to be treated like other endpoints.
schopj
50%
50%
schopj,
 User Rank: Strategist
2/19/2019 | 4:31:31 PM
Moonshot
Getting Microsoft to log at least as much as Sysmon and to start better protecting those logs so they cant be easily deleted, or if they can, can also be easily recovered.  I shouldnt have to install a third party app, or any app, just to get detailed logs monitoring process hashes and who started what from what program, or any of the other things that advanced logging applications log.  It is an MS operating system and it should log everything that is done on it, period.  


Attackers Leave Stolen Credentials Searchable on Google
Kelly Sheridan, Staff Editor, Dark Reading,  1/21/2021
How to Better Secure Your Microsoft 365 Environment
Kelly Sheridan, Staff Editor, Dark Reading,  1/25/2021
Register for Dark Reading Newsletters
White Papers
Video
Cartoon Contest
Write a Caption, Win an Amazon Gift Card! Click Here
Latest Comment: We need more votes, check the obituaries.
Current Issue
2020: The Year in Security
Download this Tech Digest for a look at the biggest security stories that - so far - have shaped a very strange and stressful year.
Flash Poll
Assessing Cybersecurity Risk in Today's Enterprises
Assessing Cybersecurity Risk in Today's Enterprises
COVID-19 has created a new IT paradigm in the enterprise -- and a new level of cybersecurity risk. This report offers a look at how enterprises are assessing and managing cyber-risk under the new normal.
Twitter Feed
Dark Reading - Bug Report
Bug Report
Enterprise Vulnerabilities
From DHS/US-CERT's National Vulnerability Database
CVE-2020-4889
PUBLISHED: 2021-01-26
IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0.0 through 5.0.5.4 and 5.1.0 could allow a local user to poison log files which could impact support and development efforts. IBM X-Force ID: 190971.
CVE-2020-4949
PUBLISHED: 2021-01-26
IBM WebSphere Application Server 7.0, 8.0, 8.5, and 9.0 is vulnerable to an XML External Entity Injection (XXE) attack when processing XML data. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to expose sensitive information or consume memory resources. IBM X-Force ID: 192025.
CVE-2021-21275
PUBLISHED: 2021-01-25
The MediaWiki "Report" extension has a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability. Before fixed version, there was no protection against CSRF checks on Special:Report, so requests to report a revision could be forged. The problem has been fixed in commit f828dc6 by making use of Medi...
CVE-2021-21272
PUBLISHED: 2021-01-25
ORAS is open source software which enables a way to push OCI Artifacts to OCI Conformant registries. ORAS is both a CLI for initial testing and a Go Module. In ORAS from version 0.4.0 and before version 0.9.0, there is a "zip-slip" vulnerability. The directory support feature allows the ...
CVE-2021-23901
PUBLISHED: 2021-01-25
An XML external entity (XXE) injection vulnerability was discovered in the Nutch DmozParser and is known to affect Nutch versions < 1.18. XML external entity injection (also known as XXE) is a web security vulnerability that allows an attacker to interfere with an application's processing of XML ...